


Offering of Letters--Tamo Pamarado and Valda Mishnov--

by Zoya1416



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Bad Poetry, Bioesthetics, Gen, Now have to write letters, Vicious 12 year girls, meeting prejudices, winning essay contest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1313821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tamo Pamarado and Valda Mishnov have won essay contests about the Cetagandan Wars, each writing from her own side.<br/>(An Offering of Reflections on the Ninth Satrapy War, by Tamo Pamarado, or, How We Whupped 'Em by Valda Mishnov) </p><p>They are now commanded to write a short series of letters to each other. The Emperors Fletchir Giaja and Gregor Vorbarra want to see lessening of tensions, so they are trying small steps by ordinary people.</p><p>Now they've just pissed off 12 year old girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all LMB's. The girls say they don't belong to anybody.  
> Note: this thing might pick up again when the Cetagandans get vids on the Dendariis and the sheer physical beauty of the country. In my view Rho Ceta is pretty, ,in that manicured Ceta way, but otherwise very flat, ocean surrounded.so each will visit the other's world. .

Valda and Tamo recently competed in an essay contest about the First Cetagandan War, each writing from her one side. (An Offering of Reflections on the Ninth Satrapy War, by Tamo Pamarado, or, How We Whupped 'Em by Valda Mishnov)

Because they are the winners, they now have assignments to write letters to each other four times in the next year. (Five if they can). No more than two poems a letter, up to ten lines each. One haiku in each one is preferred. Letters 250—500 words, including all the poetry.

Valda Mishnov  
6th grade  
Raina Czurik Primary School  
Teacher, Mina Deodov  
Silvy Vale,Vorkosigan District  
Barrayaran Empire

Valda has never written haiku or any poetry and REALLY doesn't want to write to the Ceta girl. Her teacher and Miles persuade her. She knows many people who have talked to Miles, even gotten drunk with him. She knows whom her school was named for, and why. She knows about Mark's butterbugs, and Ekaterin's Glorious Bugs, and has met Kareen. When her aunt was sick they all went to the hospital at Hassadar to wait while she got her stem-cell leukemia transfusion. They saw Cordelia, although they were not introduced, but were introduced to the doctors she had trained who talked about her.

Miles gives Valda his comconsole number so that she can write him. Emperor Gregor would prefer not to be directly contacted about this, but Miles is Miles, and Gregor's foster-brother will pull strings if he has to.

PROLOGUE: HAIKU PRACTICE

VALDA:

We fought you three times  
We beat you every time  
So fuck off and die

Working on haiku  
Makes me sick to my stomach  
I want to puke now

We have pretty springs  
With a lot of nice flowers  
Please can I quit now?

I like all the flowers  
Like the forsythia here  
They make our spring bright

Spring is pretty now  
Yellow forsythia here  
Third line no can do  
HELP!

Spring is pretty now  
Yellow forsythia blooms  
And flowering quince 

This fits and I actually think it works! Yay!

\----------------

Tamo Pamarado, Ghem family Anah  
1st Form  
Esfahani Installation Pupillar  
Instructor Mir Lahani  
Katsura, Rho Ceta  
Cetagandan Empire

Tamo Pamarado hates the assignment to write to Valda. She HATES it. She can only complain to her classmates, and the teacher. No one she knows has ever talked to the Governor of Rho Ceta, but because of this selection she must submit her work to him first. No one she has ever even heard of has spoken to Emperor Fletchir Giaja. Her creche-monitor is concerned for her, and will help her. Resistance is futile.

TAMO:

Ten lines of poems  
So savages can meet us  
With retarded minds

Oh be so polite  
And write to the dull hill girl  
The Garden will laugh

I have to chatter--  
Celestial Garden commands  
And all must obey

The hill girl will write  
Prettily I will respond  
My master I serve

Emperor commands  
Soft words of greeting to her  
Who lives in the mud

Spring winds gently blow  
As we greet the child envoy  
Whose rose buds are weak

Spring winds gently blow  
Lavender wisteria  
To greet the envoy  
(Adequate)


	2. GREETINGS TO THE ENEMEY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valda Mishnov and Tamo Palmarado recently competed in an essay contest about the First Cetagandan War, each writing from her one side. (An Offering of Reflections on the Ninth Satrapy War, by Tamo Pamarado, or, How We Whupped 'Em by Valda Mishnov)
> 
> Because they are the winners, they now have assignments to write letters to each other four times in the next year. (Five if they can). No more than two poems a letter, up to ten lines each. One haiku in each one is preferred. Letters 250—500 words, including all the poetry.

VALDA AND TAMO'S FIRST LETTERS: SPRING

Valda Mishnov  
6th grade  
Raina Czurik Primary School  
Teacher, Mina Deodov  
Silvy Vale,Vorkosigan District  
Barrayaran Empire  
TO:

Tamo Pamarado, Ghem family Anah  
1st Form  
Esfahani Installation Pupillar  
Instructor Mir Lahani  
Katsura, Rho Ceta  
Cetagandan Empire

 

Dear Miss Pamarado,

Well, you know we have to write these letters, and I guess you don't want to any more than I do, and you don't have any choice either. 

Okay. My teacher says we're just supposed to get to know each other a little better. She says they don't want us to write about the wars, just about how we are now, and what we are like, and not to call any names (but They'll take the names out if i do write them, and I'll get in trouble).

So anyway, My name is Valda Leona Mishnov, and I am 12 years old. I live with my Ma and Da, and my brothers Demitri, age16, Grigori, age 13 and Erik age 10 and my sister Faina age six.

We live in Silvy Vale, which is a little village in the Dendarii Mountains of the Vorkosigan District. There are about 60 people in the Vale, and about 200 close to us.

I go to the Raina Czurik Elementary school. It goes to 6th grade. My Ma and Da want me to go to more schooling, but I'd have to go to Hassadar, my aunt lives there, it's a very long far ways away—maybe a hunderd kilometers. I can do more lessons with our comconsole at school but the others use it a lot so I cannot use, it very much.

My Ma takes care of us kids, our goats, chickens, ducks, and our cow. They make milk (our goats and cow that is) and my mother makes, cheese, and butter, out of the milk. Then she sells it or trades it for things we want.

And we have a dog, my mother makes him herd the aminalls, his name is Dog-ninny. That's not because he is silly okay he is silly but he is named for our Count Vorkosigan's horse, Ninny. Lots of the aminals here got named for him. Well, this is our second one the first one was a bitch so we were going to call her Bitch-ninny but Ma said we coun'd so we called her Fat Ninny which I think was the horses's name really. (My cousin said.)

And Dog-ninny barks at night if anyone is coming by.

Well that's all my letter.

Sincerely yours,  
(Miss) Valda Mishnov

And this is your haiku:

Spring is pretty now  
Yellow forsythia blooms  
And flowering quince 

Oh, and my sister says to ask you if you have a boyfriend and I told her that was none of my business. But I have one and his name is Karl. He is very tall. He kissed me twice. And my brother Grigori asked whether you have to wear the facepaint all the time.

=======

Miles choked up with laughter as he read the practice haiku. He was almost tempted to send the first one on, accidentally, except that it wouldn't be nice to the little girl who was having to write these letters. Either little girl. It wouldn't even be expedient to send it out into wider Barrayaran society, even his family, because the point of everything was to reduce frictions between the Cetagandan Empire and his own.

This was part of his answer to the recent Auditorial problem which Gregor had set before him; how to turn down Ceta-Barrayar politics from their customary low simmer, to as minimal as possible. Gregor had let him know that this wasn't a full time job which he could use to avoid getting another Auditorial problem. And since an Imperial Auditor's job is, 'whatever you say, Gregor,' he'd had a bit of time to tinker.

He'd decided to have an essay contest, and it was his idea to match one of the poorest back-country Vorkosigan district's locales to one of the lesser Cetagandan ones, albeit the one which was closest to Barrayar. The idea was to get good intel, as it were, on what it was like to live in a different planet, some information on those you'd only seen as enemies. So that you might think of them as real people, to hesitate that much longer to make war on them.

Ekaterin came back from a plant-shopping expedition to meet him in their suite, finding him laughing.

“What are you looking at?”

He handed her the letter, plus the practice haiku.

“You're not letting the letter go out like this!”

“Well, no, I was going to correct the spelling and grammar—can't have Fletchir thinking that we are that ignorant.”

“And why is she sending this letter?”

Miles explained his great plan of pacifying Cetaganda one small person at a time.

“You wanted to have Cetagandan children get an idea what Barrayar is like? Why didn't you ask Lizzie or Taurie to write them? Why are you embarrassing the poor little thing?”

“Did you read her essay? I wouldn't call her a poor little thing. It was her ancestors who shoved the ghem right off the planet.”

“But you made them read each other's essays and then write to each other? That's so--”

“No, no, I didn't let them read each other's essays. Far too much anger. That contest was to determine which contestant was the most eloquent. And Tamo's not an ethereal child, for all she's this Cetagandan ghem; her creche-monitor sent me her notes, too, beside her offerings of reflections.”

Ekaterin read the ghem-girl's mutterings, and imprecations about her ex-boyfriend.

The small rude lichen  
Bearing crotyl mercaptan  
Repels all who touch 

“She read about stink-lichen and tried to make some? In her creche's own lab?”

“Yes. And was at least partly successful. The creche-monitor, whose name is Ratna Tan, is going to help her with all her letters, because the instructor just gave her the blank assignment.”

“But this girl's got to send her letter to the Governor?”

“The haut-Governor, right.”

“He'll pick over every word until she sounds like a world-class genius. This isn't very fair to the Mishnov girl.”

“Well, I won't pick over Valda's letter except to correct her grammar. The letters are supposed to let them see a slice of the other's lives. That's all. We're just testing the waters. And they won't be released publicly very soon. Fletchir promised me.”

“You're on a first name basis with TWO Emperors, I see.”

“Ummm—yes? Look, I took this up with Gregor and Fletchir both. If the Cetas just try to make themselves sound too superior, they're cutting their own throats. It will be the same old thing, and won't reduce tension. I want to see into those creche-families, plus whatever city it was on Rho Ceta. I've never heard of it. The Cetas may not be curious about us, but I think they are. For one thing, I'm not sure they have pets which aren't unique. We saw, Ivan and I, when we went to the agricultural show on Eta Ceta--”

“I'll bet that's not what THEY called it.”

“Can't remember. It was the ghem-ladies bio-constructs annual bake-off, I guess, with all sorts of weird things, half-animal, half-vegetable. We nearly got blown up by a carpet...long story, long story, BUT the point is that the only animal I actually saw with a child that day...except for some very cute fish bred to display their ghem-clan's stripes, by a twelve year old—I say, I MUST get Tamo to write about her pets...Anyway, the only one we saw with a child was a half-meter tall unicorn. But I'll bet little Tamo and her friends have no idea about animals you can put outside the back door and let reproduce by themselves.”

He shook his head, thinking far back to the time when he was a new Imperial Military Academy graduate and had been asked by his father to hear an infanticide case in Silvy Vale, the back-end of everything in the Vorkosigan district. The Count had refused to let him go down in a lightflyer from Vorkosigan Surleau, but made him take a horse, to show him something as well as the locals. He'd seen the river of runaway roses then, earth roses gone feral and a half-kilometer wide. So different from the runaway roses of another kind, which had escaped from its owner, breeder, and had climbed up Ivan's leg at that long ago “agricultural show.” 

His old horse, Ninny, Fat Ninny, had helped them cut along the track to the Vale, chewing up the roses. He'd not heard that the tradition of the name had been kept up. Ninny had nearly been the victim of the murderer as well, and for many of the Vale's people, the repair of the big cut in the horse's neck was the first introduction to galactic-level medicine. We all serve the Imperium, don't we, he thought.

============  
Tamo Pamarado, Ghem family Anah  
1st Form  
Esfahani Installation Pupillar  
Instructor Mir Lahani  
Katsura, Rho Ceta  
Cetagandan Empire

To :Valda Mishnov  
6th grade  
Raina Czurik Primary School  
Teacher, Mina Deodov  
Silvy Vale,Vorkosigan District  
Barrayaran Empire

 

Spring

Spring winds blow softly  
Lavender wisteria—  
Now meet the envoy!

Dear Miss Mishnov,

I am in receipt of your letter. For my education, I was placed in a primer day school in my home city Miyama from age five until 11. Miyama has 35,000 subjects, and Katsura 125,000. Miyama is 80 kilometers from Katsura.

So far away  
But all children school the same

I lived in Miyama with my progenitors. I have two siblings. My...half-sister, Instructor Lahani said it would be, is twenty years old and lives on her own; my brother lives with us.

Five year old boy;  
We disagree so often

I live now in my creche. The creche has 10 forms. There are 284 pupils total, thirty each year until form nine and ten. Then there is competition for placement. Only 24 will be placed for form nine, then twenty for form ten. We study very hard for placement.

The creche-families live with monitors, two each form for the boys and two for the girls. My senior monitor is Honored Ratna Tan. She has agreed to help me with the letters. We have breaks to go home to our progenitors if we want to—two weeks each term. Pupils in the eighth and ninth forms don't go home at all if they are studying for placement. Monitor Tan tells us not to worry ourselves about that now, but to concentrate on each day. She taught us poems and singing to clear our minds from excitation. For me it is hard.

I will regard the fountain of today—  
Calm now

 

We have classes for esthetic design, and these are most pleasing. My mother designs flowers for Bioesthetic Exhibitions. They are used decoratively and not competitively, but there are many exhibitions; she is in demand. One exhibition required magenta, azure, and yellow orchids which would snip themselves and then reseal and attach as leis for visitors. This isn't a great problem at all, but the exhibition coordinators gave her only five days for two thousand leis! 

Many in our constellation assisted, for honor. I helped even though I was only five. My sister was thirteen, and she requested leave from her school to help. I followed her directions, cleaning up. She made me a small lei, and my mother flash-preserved it.  
My father-progenitor designs sculptural placements. He works mostly with stone micro-mosaics, an archaic styling, but pleasing to ghem who desire small cremation columbarium niches.

To answer your question, the full facepaint of ghem is required on formal occasions—for marriage, funeral ceremonies, observed remembrance days and similar. For ordinary days smaller forms are acceptable—half-face is typical for my father. Young ghem sometimes paint only the cheek or eye-circles. Not respectful, my father says.

I did have a boyfriend, but now he is writing poems to another. I have been making revenges.

Also questions for you—since you are twelve, will you be marrying soon? And is it true that you must marry your cousin?

Also, we are not allowed any animals larger than fifteen centimeters. I saw a cow at an exhibition once—very smelly.

Sincerely,  
Tamo Pamarado

VALDA REPLY LETTER: SPRING

Dear Miss Tamo Pamarado,  
This is an erxtra letter but I wanted to set you straight. Some of the things you wrote were not very nice.

It's not legal for a girl or boy in Silvy Vale to marry before age twenty without the parents' say-so. It is only legal from 17-20 with the say-so of their parents. A girl can marry younger than that if she's got pregnant, which is not okay if you're not married. A girl who is less than seventeen can be married, But. She has to live with her parents until then. The father has to help with the baby.

The other thing about marrying your cousin I talked to Count Vorkosigan about that because it made me so mad. He said to answer it as if it were a question on a test.

So: We do not marry our cousins. There is too much risk of mutations. The grandmothers starting keeping books about the people in the mountains and how each family is related to another one. You can't marry at all if the book says it's too close. Count Vorksigan didn't know about that, but I told him the grandmothers don't talk about it very much, even to their Count. And the books are kept in Larch Springs and Winterfall, which are two valleys over. I think the only person who goes up to them much is the postman.

The Community Center:

We have built a community center for dances and politics. It's bigger than the school! It will also have a satellite feed, because we got one of those. And a comconsole soon. Anyway, My mother said that with a big place to come, for parties and dances, the more chances there are to meet boys and girls who aren't blood close.

So: that's that. And I'm really really sorry you can't have any pets. Everyone here has a lot of animals which mostly we raise for food, but it's dogs and cats too, and some horses, and they can be nice to talk to when you're really really mad at people. Dogs especially.

(Miss) Valda Mishnov


	3. INTERVAL: Valda's Message to Count Vorkosigan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the message Valda sent Miles and his response. And Ekaterin gets covetous.

“The other thing about marrying your cousin I talked to Count Vorkosigan about that because it made me so mad. He said to answer it as if it were a question on a test.”

Miles had been out all day on another Auditorial assignment—thank god not another committee—but a tangle of land and mineral rights and old politics which involved three Districts. It wasn't like bomb disposal, but you had to follow the red wire and see where it went under the green wires, and so on, before you could snip. He only wanted supper and a chance to play with his children, then go to sleep. Ekaterin stopped him after he'd changed into pajamas.

“There's a comconsole message. It wasn't private—it's from the Silvy Valley girl.”

“Dear Count Vorkosigan, I hate that Ceta girl! She asked if I was going to get married now and if it was true I had to marry my COUSINS!” Valda turned and spat on the ground, making an old anti-mutant warding gesture.

He knew that the conversation between Barrayar and Cetaganda was inevitably going to discuss biology and mutations, but wished it could have come another day. 

“Hi Valda,” he recorded, “This is Count Vorkosigan. I got your call and Tamo's letter.” He paused, tapping his teeth with a stylus. “One of the reasons that we and the Cetas need to talk to each other is because we both have such” (prejudices? Ignorance? Willful lies and deceits?)--”we don't understand each other very well. The little girl”—he stopped. Tamo's letter had been sent with the permission of the haut-governor of Rho Ceta. Either he was ignorant of Barrayaran customs, or wanted to offer a direct insult. It didn't matter. What mattered was that these two pioneers be encouraged to continue their conversation.

Ekaterin would probably have told him not to sow only two seeds, but many at once. For him this was a small scale reconnaissance—but maybe he'd pick a couple more pairs to try if these failed. But this WAS success, really; getting to grips with prejudices was easier if faced at once.

“Valda, that girl doesn't know she's being insulting, and even if she does, you can answer her question without being angry. Just think of it like it's a question on an exam. Send me your letter and I'll go over it; we'll work it out.”  
He grinned at her—ten years of parenting had taught him something about rewards.

“You are my scout-ship. I need you to go places and learn things where I can't go. Nobody else can be there. I'm sending you a sash with a badge on it. We can put on a new badge every time you write a letter.” 

Ready for bed, he saw that Ekaterin had pulled out Tamo's letter and was sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading it. Her hair was loose and poured over her shoulders—still almost all black.

He scooted over to her and lay on his side, admiring the view. She turned to him, eyes excited.

“Miles, this girl's mother is a plant breeder! She had an assignment to produce leis, which must have taken twenty orchids each, and two thousand in five days! Plus the time she needed to work out the initial bioesthetic program. She gene-designed and grew forty-thousand flowers in less than a week! I need to know how she did it. We need this type of technology and they're using it for exhibitions.” She glanced down at him like a cat who's noticed a plump mouse at her feet. “Think how fast we could terraform—can you let me talk to the mother? Soon?” The cat was admonishing the mouse to get busy or else.

“Ekaterin, we need to let them talk a little more. Valda is barely able to speak now, she's so mad. Give it time to work.” 

Her face drooped a bit.

“Okay, even if this thing blows up I'll find you a way to talk to her. Or someone even better.”

They cuddled a bit and then went to sleep. He dreamed of strings of orchids which chased him and climbed up his leg, and of villagers making the old mutant signs. 'go away,' his mind insisted, 'you are the past.' Then he dreamed of two little girls walking up a hill with rows of flower badges on their sashes.


End file.
